Polar modulators for wireless transceivers offer a few benefits for implementation compared to conventional I/Q transceivers, such as lower current consumption due to a lower peak to average amplitude ratio and half clock local oscillator (LO) distribution. Polar modulators also exhibit no counter intermodulation, and higher output power is possible since a polar modulator is less sensitive to re-modulation. Further, with a polar modulator there is no limitation to support a wider signal bandwidth that is required for digital pre-distortion.
The polar modulator concept separates the modulation signal into an amplitude modulation (AM) signal and a phase modulation (PM) signal. The symbols or points used in polar modulation correspond or translate from Cartesian coordinates utilized in vector modulation concepts. The polar modulation concept provides power efficiency advantages, among others.